To date, many media editing applications exist for creating media presentations by compositing several pieces of media content such as video, audio, animation, still image, etc. Such applications give users the ability to edit, combine, transition, overlay, and piece together different media content in a variety of manners to create a resulting composite presentation. Examples of media editing applications include Final Cut Pro® and iMovie®, both sold by Apple Inc.
Some media editing applications provide editing tools for adding voice-over content to a presentation. Such voice-over content provides audiences with insight (e.g., narration, translation, off screen commentary) for other video and/or audio content in the presentation. Typically, a voice-over clip is produced by recording the voice of a narrator or actor reading aloud a prepared script through a microphone. The narrator may read the script from a printed document or a monitor that displays the script. Once the voice-over clip is produced, a content editor may import the voice-over clip and perform various other editing operations to incorporate the clip into the presentation.
To facilitate voice-over clip creation, a media editing application may include an audio recording feature. With such a media editing application, the narrator (that may also be the content editor) typically launches a separate text editing application to display a text document containing a script. The narrator then reads the script into a microphone while recording his or her voice using the media editing application.
There are a number shortcomings with the approaches mentioned above. For instance, in creating a voice-over clip, a narrator performs take after take (i.e., read a same script multiple times) in order to match the timing of a voice-over with other video clip and/or audio clip in a composite presentation. Also, launching a separate text editing application (e.g., Text Edit, Pages) to display a script causes the operating system's user interface to be cluttered with various user interface windows (e.g., the media editing application, a document reader, an audio recorder, etc.) making it difficult to read the script. Furthermore, reading a script from a printed document or a separate text editing application fails to correlate the scripted words with a composite content that is being produced.